You are walking on the northwest wing of Wilson Hall, and you see your peers involved in a heated conversation in Room 109: an Honor Council trial is in session.
The Honor Council upholds academic integrity within the upper school. They educate the community about the traditional virtues of the school, discipline the people who come short of those set virtues and rehabilitate those individuals through the Character Mentorship Program.
According to the upper school’s Honor Code handbook, “Before the Honor Council Hearing, all the jury members will be briefed about confidentiality and being unbiased and be required to sign an agreement.”
In the past, the Honor Council has strengthened its privacy protocols to ensure confidentiality and discretion are being exercised for the individual on trial. Still, materials have frequently leaked through the hearings by sitting jury members. In the Honor Code handbook, it states, “an eleven-person jury will be selected. Six of the eleven jury members will be selected from the Honor Council… The remaining five jury members will be randomly selected from the student body.” The council is determined to mitigate those risks.
When details get out, it lets people know things they can’t do and what they’ll be held accountable for.
Ryan davey ’23
“I feel like it is not the council members that are telling what is going on during the meetings,” Sixth Form Honor Council Chairman Ryan Davey said. “[It’s] usually the jury members who are more of the weak link.”
However, mitigating the spread of information can be a difficult task.
“People should know who to tell and who not to tell. Information about situations should only be told to the people involved,” Sixth Form past jury member Jasir Plumer-Butler said.
Respect and privacy for people who fall short of the community’s virtues are at risk when their peers spread their information. However, the leak of this information might be a benefit to prevent future hearings and breakage of the Honor Code.
“When details get out, it lets people know things they can’t do and what they’ll be held accountable for,” Davey stated.
The process of each hearing is an integral factor of the Honor Council’s magic, but it requires the student body’s confidence.
“The Honor Council works if the majority of the student body trusts the people in the process,” the Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Ms. Rhonda Brown said. “Students will be alright not knowing every detail when they trust folks in the hearings.”
“This year when I was selected for a trial, I was secretive about it. However, I have a friend who I trust the most, and I talked to him about the doings and importance of the trail,” an anonymous Sixth Former said.
Jury members spreading information about the trials to their closest friends can result in information being spread easily. These comments are hard to contain because a lot of these jury members need to talk to someone after being stressed out.
“People do not need to know that information,” Plumer-Butler said. “It does not need to be advertised.”
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